Fugue
by staphylococci
Summary: The three of them were standing there, like a beautiful trifecta, and then memories were tumbling in relentlessly. He let out a sharp cry and pressed his forehead into his hands. What the hell? The fire. His unlikely escape. The dental records. Wilson's death, the incessant sobbing, the loss of direction. And then… what? He had appeared at a log cabin. (post-finale)
1. Resurrected

**A/N: **This idea came to me very suddenly, and I knew I had to run with it before it got away. It will be VERY dark. You have been warned.

Dissociative fugue is a very real, albeit rare psychological condition. Not much is known about its cause or what makes people "snap out of it," but it is almost always related to major stressors or some sort of post-traumatic stress.

* * *

1. Resurrected

_Something is scratching its way out  
__Something you want to forget about._

"Little House" - The Fray

When he stepped into the hospital, he was met with strange looks. Nothing out of the ordinary: he was accustomed to this – was used to the stares, the glares, the confusion. His clothes were tattered. His limp was deterring and frightening. He hadn't cut his hair in months, hadn't shaved in longer. He took a deep breath – in, out, in, out. _People have always stared_, he told himself, evening his breathing. _It's just a hospital._

He'd been a lumberjack for as long as he could remember, and had done work at Sourland Mountain countless times. The scent of pine had replaced body odor. It seemed as though he perspired sap. He could determine the time of the day better by the height of the sun than by the hands of an analog clock. The forest had become more of a home to him than his cabin was, but the eerie déjà vu he felt upon entering the teaching hospital was not to be ignored.

For the first time since his thigh, he'd slipped. The rain had been pelting down like a son of a bitch, coating everything with a slick layer of ice water that made almost any job involving sharp instruments a death wish. But this work was his life – this was what he did – and he wasn't to be intimidated by mother nature's misplaced tears.

The tall cedar hadn't given beneath the bite of the saw, and the tool had jumped from his hand, turning itself off as it did so, a safety feature that stopped him from amputating his own limb. The blade had still managed to nick the end of his boot, cutting the top of his foot open in a threatening gash. He'd tried to stunt the bleeding with an old rag, but he had given in when he saw the tip of a bone._ Navicular, _he thought mildly. _My navicular bone._

He had no idea how he knew. But he never questioned it.

He also didn't question how he knew exactly where the hospital's clinic was, navigating with ease through sliding glass doors and gurneys and doctors and blood pressure cuffs. The receptionist gave him a long sideways look while handing him the clipboard. "I'm sorry," she began, and he had interacted with enough people to know that an apology was never a great way to start a sentence, "but… what's your name?"

The clipboard slipped in his clammy hands. "Jim," he said. His voice wavered as he began to tremble. "Jim Reilly. Why?"

Accusation tumbled from his lips before he could stop it. _No_, he wanted to say, _I didn't mean to say it like that_. He wasn't used to people. Wasn't used to society.

She spoke before he could. "You look just like someone I knew," she said off-handedly. "Sorry," she repeated, and shoved her face into her paperwork, dismissing him with her embarrassment.

The chairs were cold and the room was eerily silent. Sweat was settling on his forehead and his penmanship was ruined by his incessant shaking. Name. Date of birth. Why are you here? Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Silently, he prayed that he only needed a few stitches - he couldn't remember the last time he'd had health insurance, and wasn't sure he could afford something like surgery, or even an expensive antibiotic.

The pain had deteriorated to a dull throb, eclipsed by the pounding in his head. He'd been feeling strangely unlike himself for weeks, but had woken up feeling particularly off. The weather was miserable, the day was long, his life was hard – he figured that was as good a reason as any to feel "off" on any given day.

Before long, he was being led to an examination room by a friendly nurse. He watched as her red ponytail bobbed in front of him, studied the color of her scrubs. Why did it all seem so familiar? He was certain he'd never been to Princeton-Plainsboro. He avoided hospitals at all costs. Who on earth could she possibly resemble?

They entered the examination room and she motioned for him to take a seat. He obliged, dragging his useless leg behind him as he approached the chair. When he sat, he turned to the nurse and forced a smile.

She blanched, her jaw falling open as she made eye contact with him.

He felt the nervousness set in again; each muscle in his body tensed and cold perspiration dampened the back of his already rain-soaked shirt. "Everything okay?" he asked quietly.

"What… did you do to your leg?"

"Laceration on my dorsal right foot, maybe all the way through to the navicular bone," he recited, the medical jargon springing from his lips with blind expertise.

The nurse looked even more horrified at his perfect diagnosis. "No," she shook her head once, twice. A third time. "Your…" she pointed toward his right thigh, dangling like a limp pig in a butcher shop window.

"Oh. Severed the muscle," he explained quietly, drawing a line across where most of his rectus femoris had been, smack dab in the middle of his thigh. "I'm a lumberjack, so I deal with a lot of –"

"I'm sorry," the nurse said, backing toward the door. She looked horrified. What was with the apologies today? Had he done something wrong? "I'm just going to grab the doctor…"

The door slammed shut behind her.

He sat, worried, confused, alone. She hadn't even looked at his foot, hadn't even started to remove his sock or clean the wound. Hadn't even asked him his date of birth or full name, hadn't –

The door flew open, revealing a petite, blonde doctor in heels. Her fair features were tied up in rage, her knuckles white with fury as she clenched the clipboard in front of her.

"Is this supposed to be a _joke?_" she seethed, her voice a violent whisper. "I could have you _arrested!_"

He blinked. Anxiety crept into his chest and arteries, slugging his brain function and forcing even more sweat from his pores. "What?" His voice was quiet and scared. His hand absently clenched his thigh.

"'Jim Reilly,'" she read mockingly from his form, "'lumberjack. Fifty-two years of age. Previous medical history includes a partially removed rectus femoris due to an accident with a _saw._'" She threw the clipboard onto the counter and shoved her hands onto her slim hips. "_Jim? Honestly?_"

It had been ages since he had seen someone so angry, and he had absolutely no clue how to deal with it. "I don't know what you –"

"This isn't a _game, _House!" she bellowed, stepping toward him and poking an accusatory finger in his face. "You can't fake your own death to avoid jail time, and then grow a beard to change identities!"

_House? _The tremors were nearly untamable now, rendering him incapable of speaking. He put a hand to his forehead and wiped the sweat away. "I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head side to side. "I don't know who you're talking about." Breathing became more difficult – the air seemed to be thinner in this room with this angry woman. He gripped the edge of the seat and leant forward, willing the oxygen to reach his lungs. He was gasping, clawing at his own neck.

His eyes rose to meet the doctor's, who was now mirroring his confusion on her own face. "You really have no idea what's going on," she realized.

In a flurry of movement, she was at his side, running a hand up and down his back. "Shhh," she said, trying to relax him enough to return his breathing to normal. "I'm sorry – just breathe. I can explain everything. I didn't realize… I don't understand…" she tried to string words together but was unable to figure out what it was that she was trying to say.

How could this man in front of her be Gregory House?

"Listen," she said after his breaths had become more regular. How could she be sure this was him? It was the eyes, she knew. The eyes gave him away. "Your name is Gregory House. We all thought you died two years ago. I worked for you. My name is Allison Cameron."

He was shaking his head, running fingers through his hair agitatedly. His head was throbbing as if it had a heartbeat of its own, his breaths again coming laboriously. "Why are you saying this? I just told you my name."

He blinked and the door was open, and two more doctors were entering the room. The walls seemed to close in on him as he processed their faces. The first to enter was a fit black man in a suit, the second was tall, blonde, and clad in jeans and a button-up. The black man stared at him, eyes probing like daggers into his soul.

Dr. Cameron was speaking, explaining something to these men, trying to make sense of something that was nonsensical. And the three of them standing there, like a beautiful trifecta, set off a light bulb somewhere in the depths of his mind that spread across each synapse like wildfire. He looked at his hands, at his foot, at his clothing. Looked at the equally stunned people in front of him.

Jim Reilly. Who was Jim Reilly? _He _was, wasn't he? Hadn't he sawed down trees for decades, lived in a tiny log cabin in the woods, worked under the table for more money than he'd ever needed? Wasn't he…

Then the memories were tumbling in relentlessly, and he let out a sharp cry and pressed his forehead into his hands. _What the hell? _The fire. His unlikely escape. The dental records. His friend's death, the incessant sobbing, the loss of direction. And then… what?

He had appeared at a log cabin.

He had become Jim Reilly.

"Jesus Christ," Gregory House said, a look of terrified agony flicking to his face. "I remember."


	2. Remember

2. Remember

_Dear, you left too soon; went to the next room.  
If you haunt me, I'll sing for you._

"Eileen" - The Hush Sound

"_What _do you remember?" Cameron demanded. Taub stumbled into the room behind Chase and Foreman, a shocked look on his face as he registered the man on the examination table. He looked to his coworkers for help and appeared to be frustrated when nobody spoke.

House was pinching the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, trying to steady his breathing, trying to appear calm, cool, collected. Trying to act like who he remembered he once was. Trying to act like he hadn't assumed a separate fucking identity for the past year.

"House –" Cameron began.

"Jesus, Cameron, I don't know!" He was yelling now, throwing his hands up in defeat. He shook his head and felt the despair settle over him, an intangible weight that visibly sagged his shoulders. "I have no idea what the fuck happened. I don't know how the hell I walked in here fully confident that I was someone else, and had been for my entire life!" He let out an aggravated cry. "Can somebody fix my damn foot? Or whoever's foot this happens to be?"

Cameron quickly flitted to the counter, pulling on a pair of gloves and selecting antibiotic cream and hydrogen peroxide. She returned to his side, carefully removing his sock and sucking in a sharp breath as she saw the damage the saw had done. She set to work.

They sat, five brilliant doctors rendered useless by this small miracle, in the substantial air of the room, the tension as thick as the thunderstorm outside. The raindrops pelted the windows of the exam room. The thunder boomed threateningly.

Chase looked as if he were ready to call _Ripley's Believe It or Not_. "This doesn't make any sense. We have your _dental _records _confirming _that you died in that fire."

House froze. _The fire_.

A splash of antiseptic, courtesy of Cameron, set the cogs of his mind whirring again. He remembered the fire. Remembered hallucinating people who had once meant so much to him, remembered watching Wilson's face contort into agony as they both realized the building was collapsing. He remembered dragging himself from the ash and into the alley behind the building. Rushing to his apartment, showering the soot and pain away. Looking into the mirror, his hands anchoring him to the sink so he would not ram his forehead into the glass. "What now?" he had screamed at himself over and over, the cuts on his face breaking open again from the force.

He remembered cleaning the sink with bleach, ridding the traces of blood, removing any evidence that he had returned to the apartment. He remembered switching the records and faking his own death, allowing himself the freedom to spend Wilson's last months by his side. What he did not remember was the period after Wilson's death, and how he came to be an all-star lumberjack in central New Jersey.

He avoided prison by faking his death.

He had intended on not ever returning to this life.

He had intended on not living. Period.

The walls seemed to fold in on him like the halves of a drawbridge, forcing him into the dark moat lurking below. What could he do? He would go to jail for the rest of his life, he was almost certain. He wouldn't be a doctor. He wouldn't be anyone. He'd rot miserably. He was used to misery, it was true. But he was not used to misery in the absence of James Wilson.

"Do you remember the fire?" Chase asked gently.

House shook his head once, making the decision final with that lone act. "Nope," he said, a hint of defeat in his voice.

Cameron stopped suturing, looking up at the ghost before her in total awe. She looked over her right shoulder at Chase and Foreman. A trio of confused puppies.

Except for Foreman, House realized. Foreman, who had undoubtedly discovered the fixed table in his office. Who probably still had his old name tag in a shrine somewhere in his home.

"So you're telling me," Taub chimed in, making himself known as he stepped forward, "that you, in a state of delirium after realizing you'd spend the rest of the time that mattered to you in jail, wandered into a burning building, nearly died, then ventured into the woods and assumed an entirely new life by creating some sort of strange identity and becoming a _lumberjack_. Coincidentally named _Jim_."

House was embarrassed. How could that happen? He was not the sort of person to have psychological breaks. Sure, there had been that thing with Cuddy, but he wasn't the sort to amble aimlessly through time not knowing who he was. "Crazier things have happened," he said lamely.

Had he been hallucinating?

"Who switched the dental records, then?"

"My _grandmother_," House seethed, rubbing the back of his neck as Cameron finished the stitches. "I have no _clue_. Maybe I did it. Maybe Wilson –"

He stopped speaking, his heart pumping angrily in his chest. _Wilson_. He'd said it out loud, and the pain was as obvious as the scar on his thigh. "Maybe Wilson still thought I was alive, and was hoping to selfishly drag me with him across the country as he slowly croaked," he finished quietly.

Silence met this insensitive comment. He felt as if a cold hand had gripped his heart and forced the life from it.

"Or maybe," Foreman countered, his eyes revealing just how unconvinced he was, "_you _switched the dental records, _un_selfishly dragged _yourself_ across the country as he slowly croaked, and knew you could get out of anything that happened by playing the 'nutcase' card. And it would've worked fine. Been noble, even, if you hadn't strolled in here like you still own the place."

Cameron appeared to be offended for House. Taub appeared to agree. Chase appeared to be sick from the complexity of it all.

The silence returned, filling the corners of the room like a noxious gas.

"Dissociative fugue," Chase breathed, and the proverbial light bulb flashed above his head. "Almost always associated with post-traumatic stress. Your brain completely rejected your environment, who you were… everything."

"For _two years_?" Foreman blurted.

"Yes," Taub agreed sardonically. "Because _House _seems like the kind of guy capable of completely forgetting who he was because he was _stressed_."

"Psychological conditions don't discriminate," Cameron argued, tying off the sutures and beginning to sterilize the wound a final time. "He's had hallucinations before. He's had psychological issues before. He's got a _ton _of things in his past that are potential stressors. When he realized he wouldn't be able to go with Wilson – that he had ruined the one thing that meant anything to him – it finally broke him, and his brain took itself out of the environment that caused the stress."

"And that environment happened to be his entire body," Foreman said levelly, but the sarcasm was not lost on the group. "For _two years_. Most cases of fugue last months, _if _that. He… he –"

"'_He_' happens to be sitting directly in front of you morons," House added, fiddling with a seam on his shirt.

A beat. "We can't be sure you didn't just fake it," Foreman argued. "I'm the dean of medicine. I can't just accept your word for it and let you wander around this hospital when you're a fugitive."

"First of all, we _can't _prove or disprove dissociative fugue _anyway_, so we may as well give him the benefit of the doubt. Secondly, he's not a fugitive if he had no conscious recollection of wandering off," Chase said.

"Are we honestly ddx-ing _House _right now…?" Taub muttered, half under his breath.

Cameron chimed in, a thought coming to her. "The most they can make him do is serve the six months for the destruction of property charge from the season ticket incident."

"They can't even make him do _that_ if they deem him psychologically unable to," Chase finished.

"Yeah," Taub snorted, "but they can chuck him into the loony bin."

Their banter continued without pause, as it always had, and they either failed to notice the exhaustion on their former boss's face or didn't care that it existed. They were interrupted by Foreman several minutes later after he caught a glance of the clock on the opposite wall. "Look," he interjected, raising both hands in a universal gesture of submission. "This is obviously a lot to take in for all of us. But it's five o'clock. I've got paperwork to do, and you guys don't have a case. As much as I love to pay you to do nothing but clinic hours…"

House offered a pointed look at Cameron. "And by 'you guys don't have a case,' you mean…"

Cameron rose, setting her jaw. "_We _don't have a case." She walked across the clinic room and fetched gauze and a roll of medical tape, settling herself in front of House's damaged foot upon returning to her starting place.

Chase smiled slightly and raised his eyebrows, sharing a silent comment with House. "Well, I'm glad you're not dead," he said simply, shrugging his shoulders and turning to leave the room. "See you soon," he said in parting, and his eyes flicked to Cameron before the door shut.

Taub nodded his head in agreement and filed out after him.

"We're not done here," Foreman said to House in warning. "We're going to have to go to the police and let them know you're alive. And I'm not sure how much of this dissociative fugue bullshit I believe."

"I'm not stupid enough to just wander back to the same damn hospital I used to work at under my own willpower," House growled. "That should be good enough evidence. Apparently, old me had a great life being nobody. Not _talking _to anyone, not _seeing _anyone…" he trailed off, glowering at Foreman. "If it were any other patient, you would know this was a cut and dry psych case."

"You're not any other patient."

"I never intended to live this long!" House roared, throwing his hands into the air. Absolute fucking morons, he thought to himself. How had he tolerated these people for so long? Did they really think he was this idiotic?

There was silence for a long moment, the rain seemingly suspended in the air outside. The thunder did not clap, the lightning did not roar. House picked mindlessly at a scab on his calloused, ruined fingers. Could these be the same fingers that once stretched nearly two octaves on a piano and tenderly caressed the strings of a guitar? That probed for swollen lymph nodes and counted beats per minute?

Cameron finished bandaging, keeping her head and eyes cast downward.

"What's left for me?" House asked rhetorically, his eyes taking on a blue that rivaled the widest oceans, the deepest seas. "I won't ever practice medicine again. My best friend is dead. I'm in pain. Do you honestly think I would've chosen cutting trees down and living in the mountains over the recluse of death? Why would I ever want to come back to the real world?"

The miserable silence returned. House shoved the emotions away, back to where they belonged: in the deepest, darkest crevices of his soul. They complicated everything, blurred the blacks and whites to smoky greys that made life impossibly complex.

Something in Foreman's eyes changed at House's admission. House had opened the floodgates and let the innermost parts of him be seen in those few sentences of truth. Foreman's voice softened, but the words were stern. "You're not stepping into this hospital until you go to the police or drop back off the radar permanently."

House sighed. "Give me one night of peace."

Foreman didn't break his gaze. "One week," he said quietly, and turned to leave. "If anyone asks," he told Cameron, "we met House's doppelganger today."

As the door closed behind Foreman, Cameron finished bandaging House's leg, taking a step back to admire her work as she did so. She walked to the sink to wash her hands. House listened as she hummed the birthday song to herself twice and scrubbed, as she always had in order to ensure fully sterilized hands, before shutting off the faucet.

She turned to him, drying her hands on a paper towel. House studied her. Her brunette roots had grown in at least two inches, her nails were bitten to stubs. Bags had settled heavily under her eyes, and her figure was a bit softer, a bit rounder, but she was still too thin, and still as beautiful as she'd been when he had first hired her.

House was good at addition.

"You have a kid," he said smoothly.

Cameron saw how pleased he was with himself and rolled her eyes, trying to mask shock. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Yes, I have a kid." Cameron tossed the paper towels away and sighed. "Do you have anywhere to stay tonight?"

"Why, need a sitter?" House quipped.

Cameron let her head fall to one side, her eyes depicting annoyance. "I'm guessing you don't have much money. And whatever you do have, you're probably going to need. Stay at my place tonight. I have a couch. And a fireplace."

"And a husband," House added.

Cameron shook her head once, a smile of mixed emotions on her face. "No husband," she said, and headed for the door. "Meet me in the garage in five minutes."

The door slid shut slowly, leaving House alone, the angry rain pelting the windows in something reminiscent of a swan song.


	3. Rebirth

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews, follows, and love, friends!

* * *

3. Rebirth

_If you're looking for truth, don't come looking for me  
You're better off not knowing  
It's your own story, it's the safest place you'll ever be._

"Safest Place" – Echosmith

Cameron's place was humble two-bedroom home in the suburbs, a solid thirty minute drive from the hospital. House stepped over the threshold behind her and was welcomed by shades of warm tans and browns, an environment that reeked of safety and comfort. It made him wrinkle his nose.

After they'd left the hospital, she'd driven him to the nearest Wal-Mart, where she'd purchased him a package of boxer briefs, a package of plain white tees, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of jeans. He set the bag down upon stepping over the threshold, leaning heavily on the plastic cane they'd stolen from the hospital. Exhaustion pulled at his arms and shoulders, encouraging him to collapse onto the plush sand-toned sofa in a useless heap of misery. He'd come back from the dead today.

The nanny rose from the couch and exchanged a few words with Cameron, successfully packing up her things too quickly for House to even fully comprehend what was happening in front of him. The next time he blinked, Cameron was emerging from the bedroom to the left of the bathroom, shutting the door softly behind her.

She pointed toward the bathroom, a cobalt room with yellow accents. Small ducks were painted on the walls, and a miniature rubber duck sat on the corner of the bathtub. "Cute," he muttered dryly.

"Shower," she said, and flicked the light and fan on. She summoned a couple of towels from the linen closet and set them on the toilet.

House was too tired to contest. He picked up the shopping bag and limped tiredly toward the duck-clad room, pretending not to notice Cameron's concerned stare prodding his beaten form.

Shutting the door behind him, he sighed and sat on top of the closed toilet seat, dropping his head in his hands in defeat. He could hear the rain still on the window, the sound reverberating deep in the hollows of his soul. It was November. It was cold. He was about to take his first hot shower in… how long?

He stood up – too quickly, judging by the spinning sensation in his head – and leant forward to turn on the faucet, but was surprised by a moving figure to his right. He pivoted and nearly lost his balance.

It was a mirror. He was looking at himself.

Shock spread across his already unrecognizable face. His skin was several shades darker and folded in deep wrinkles that had been accelerated by countless hours of sun exposure. The balding hair on his head was long, past his ears, and his beard had grown out around his mouth and jaw, a wiry salt and pepper mask that shrouded his features. The only thing that could possibly give him away was the thing that always had given him away: the Carolina blue of his eyes, soft and piercing all at once, all without meaning to be.

That, and the limp.

Angrily, he rifled through the drawers beneath the sink, smiling in satisfaction when he found a pair of scissors. He began to blindly shear the locks off his chin, shortening them just enough to allow a razor to finish off the job. He stole a razor from another drawer and lathered his face with Cameron's feminine shaving cream, restoring his face to a respectable condition with a few short strokes of the Venus 3-blade.

The blood from the cuts on his face dripped into the sink, creating a mess of hair and gore on the porcelain. He gathered as much of the hair as he could and wrapped it in toilet paper, tossing the wad into the wastebasket next to the toilet. He then rinsed the sink out as best he could.

Undressing was painful, so he did so slowly, tossing each filthy clothing article into the corner of the room one at a time. Averting his eyes from the puckered scar on his thigh, he chose to direct his attention at his foot, which was by no means in any sort of condition to be submerged in water. He surveyed the room around him. His eyes settled on the Walmart bag, which he overturned and secured around his injured foot. Waterproof enough.

The hot water was a welcoming embrace. As the steam swirled and encompassed his ragged frame, he thought of the nights he would emerge from the shower and find Wilson seated on his couch, beer in hand, trying to remember what channel Discovery was. "Follow the angry cries of Creationists," House would yell. "If you hit the BYU channel, you've got too far."

Those days were long over. He had made this major realization a few times over the three hours or so since he'd returned to the land of the living, but it hurt just as much every time, was just as surprising as the moment he'd realized Wilson had finished breathing for the rest of eternity.

Dirt and sap flowed from his skin, and it took a solid thirty minutes of introspective marinating and scrubbing before the water ran clear from his body. He was pruny, smelled of strawberries, and was cleaner than he'd been, presumably, in a year.

He removed the bag and filled it with his Old Life clothes, then dressed carefully in sweatpants and a t-shirt. When he pushed the bathroom door open, Cameron was leaping backward, looking suspiciously like she had just been pressed against it searching for signs of life.

House gave her a pointed look. She blushed, becoming, for a moment, a Cameron of a former lifetime. She then registered the lack of hair on his face. "I was just making sure you were still alive. Wanted to make sure I wasn't going to open my bathroom door to a massacre. Judging by your face, I'm assuming there's one in there anyway."

"Figured I'd donate to Locks of Love. I heard their headquarters is in your sewage system."

Cameron frowned. "You look like… you. Minus the chronic five o'clock shadow."

"What are the odds?" he mused, trying to navigate around her. She stepped back in his way.

"No, this is _bad_," she said, studying his face. "Everyone will know who you are."

"Minus the chronic five o'clock shadow," he repeated.

"House."

"I'll wear sunglasses," he shrugged. When she shook her head, he shrugged again. "And a hat."

"House. How many other men in central New Jersey use a _cane?_"

"How many other men are legally _dead?_" House challenged, standing so close to Cameron that he towered over her. He could feel her breaths on his cooling skin. "If anyone sees me, they will _know _I am not Greg House. Why, you ask? Because Greg House died in a fire two years ago."

Cameron stared at her feet and did not challenge him as he sidestepped around her into the living room.

She had put a sheet on the couch and provided him with a pillow and two blankets. Two glasses of wine sat on the coffee table, accompanied only by a bottle of ibuprofen and the clicker.

He settled himself down easily on the couch and leant back, allowing the cushion to envelop him like a giant hug. "I can start a fire. Give me a minute," Cameron called from the bathroom.

"I apparently have an innate and underrated wood-chopping ability, so let me know if you need any trees disassembled." He reached toward the coffee table for the clicker, turning SportsCenter on. Sports. He cracked a smile. He'd forgotten they existed.

After a while, Cameron's light footsteps approached the living room, her wavering voice breaking the dull football discussion emitted by the TV. "Think this is proof enough for Foreman?" she asked, holding up House's wallet. He had left it on the sink.

House jumped at the sound of her voice, having dozed off slightly. When he turned and saw what she was holding, he blinked. Of course, he thought. He reached for it.

The blonde drew her hand away and looked at him nervously before pulling a card from a slot. It was an ID that read "Jersey 'Jacks," presumably the company he had worked for as a lumberjack. The top right corner held a photo of him, beard and all, though his blue eyes undeniably pierced the camera. _Jim Reilly, _it read. _Male. 6'3". DOB: 6/11/59._

Cameron dug into the cash divider, pulling out what she guessed was at least several thousand dollars as she did so. Her eyes went wide. "What the…"

"No license or birth certificate means no bank," House explained, sadness obvious in his words. "Apparently Jimbo didn't drive, either."

"What's this?" Cameron asked, sticking her long fingers into one of the pockets hidden behind the card slots. There was a small piece of paper folded four or five times. She pulled it out curiously, unfolding it as she did so. Four short lines were scribbled on it in messy handwriting.

"'I guess I'm just frightened out of my mind,'" she read, hands shaking, "'but if that's how I feel, then it's the best feeling I've ever known. It's undeniably real. Leave...'" she stopped, suddenly realizing, to some extent, what exactly she was holding. How had she missed it? Wilson's distinctive southpaw penmanship, the significance of the words before her. The song that had brought them together. Her eyes leapt to House's pleadingly, but it was far too late to take back anything she'd done.

"Leave a tender moment alone," House finished quietly, his lips pulled taut across his face. He turned his head to the side and kept his features as tight as possible as he stared out the window at the dark, at the black, at the miserable rain.


	4. Recite

**A/N: **Clarification – no House/Wilson, no House/Cameron. Leave a Tender Moment Alone is indeed a love song. The portion Wilson selects in this story is in no way indicative of a relationship… just friendship. And not ruining something by talking about it too much when there's nothing, truly, that needs to be said.

Also, sorry for the wait; the school year is quickly approaching and with it, the chaos of being a student. Hurrying to finish this by the end of the summer.

4. Recite

_Don't let me tumble away into the throes of this shadowy bay,  
I clung to the rock and it's crumbling off  
Toss me a heavy rope, it's a slippery slope;  
Come bail me out of this God forsaken precipice._

"Heavy Rope" – LIGHTS

Cameron was curled across from House on the couch, her feet tucked beneath her in a catlike position of comfort and preparation – as if at any moment, if necessary, she could spring to her feet.

She had watched and waited patiently as he'd taken the note from her hands and caressed it, drawing his long pianist's fingers across the waterlogged ink stains. Had let him stare uselessly into the darkness. Had indiscreetly swapped out the wine for tea made with passionflower, something he knew was a natural stress-reliever and insomnia-basher. He had a feeling he still wouldn't be sleeping any time soon.

Now she sat, again patient, across from him, waiting for him to emit some sign of life. He sighed heavily.

She jumped at the opportunity. "Talk to me," she said quietly, the begging tones barely muted. He could tell she was concerned – it was one of the most prominent emotions he saw on her – and he knew there was no way out of this situation without an explanation. He was cornered.

Slowly, be began. "When Wilson was dying – really, full-on shutting down – he wouldn't shut up about how thankful he was. 'Thanks for being so great, you're the best,' whatever. I kept telling him to shut up because he was being a wuss, but mostly because I couldn't stand to hear it."

Pausing, he stared into his mug, watching as the teabag swirled and was then swallowed by the liquid, like a black hole consuming whatever it could reach its tendrils into. He shook his head. "I got out of the fire and switched the records. Left my nametag under a leg of Foreman's stupid table in his office, so that's why he's so suspicious of me. He's always known."

"That's why Wilson left your funeral the way he did," Cameron mumbled under her breath.

"We drove for a long time. Dipped into the South and drove to the West Coast. Did a couple of fun things before he really started to bite it in California." He drew his lips in a tight line over his mouth, willing the sadness to disappear, to float far away somewhere he could never reach it again. "And… then I guess he kicked the bucket and I went apeshit. He died in his sleep, left me that note and a bottle of Cuervo," he finished with a shrug. He did not – could not – make eye contact with Cameron.

The note was still in his hands. He unfolded it and let his eyes skim the ink. "Something about us never talking about him dying. But him being okay."

A beat. The wind howled outside.

"You don't remember anything after that?" she asked, eyes wide.

Words would not come. He shook his head.

"You ended up in _New Jersey_. From _California."_

The fire that she'd started crackled peacefully, background noise that kept the silence comfortable. The rain had stopped falling, at long last, but the entire state was saturated – he paused to think, if he were still working at the hospital, how many MVAs would've come into the ER, and how many of those MVAs would've ended up on his desk as a file of interest. He would've argued with Cuddy, or Foreman, or anyone who would've argued back. And finally, for whatever reason, he would've accepted a case, and solved it at the last minute, knocking back a glass of gin and finally sleeping fitfully.

"I've heard stories about that day. The fire," Cameron added quickly. She was knotting her hands together in an attempt to wring some of the tension from her body. Mindlessly, she reached for the coffee table, grabbing her mug again. "How did you get out of the building?" Cameron asked unevenly, her mug shaking in her hands. It was almost as if she were afraid of him. Or perhaps afraid _for _him.

He waited a moment before speaking, carefully placing his words in the air before them. "I planned on dying, for most of it. Figured there was nothing left for me. I'd be in jail, Wilson would die, the whole shebang. When I was in the building," he said quietly, not raising his eyes, "you were there. First you told me I deserved to be able to give up. Then you told me I could change. Left through the back door."

Cameron seemed absolutely floored by this revelation. She stopped moving. Stopped breathing. House waved a hand in front of her eyes. She blinked. "You… hallucinated… me?

House glared at her. "Oh, don't flatter yourself. For three years you exerted your belief in all things fluffy and cuddly in front of my face. Doesn't surprise me that during what I thought were my final moments of life, my subconscious would try to create something that would bludgeon me with the potential positivity of my future." He rolled his eyes.

Cameron, though, had a clever smile on her face, and eventually shook her head in dismay. "Well, it appears that you took me a little too literally." She motioned to the ID card sitting on the coffee table. This elicited a smile from House. "You really don't remember anything about getting back to Princeton?"

He shook his head, but suddenly felt himself clamming up. "Don't know anything. Can we stop playing Twenty Questions? Everyone seems to forget that I rose again today in fulfillment of the scripture."

"I'm not married," she said, taking the light atmosphere as a cue to plunge into her own story, mostly because she knew House was too proud to ask. She explained that she'd lived in Chicago for a while, had dated on and off, but had never found someone that made her as happy as her first husband. She had used his sperm that she'd frozen and gotten pregnant with her son, Julian, and had worked for a year or so in Chicago with the help of a male nanny who took him during her shifts. In the end, Illinois began to swallow her, a constant reminder of the life she'd had in the past, and she had packed up and returned to New Jersey, the only other place that held any sort of promise for her.

"Chase offered me my job back, no questions asked," she said, and shrugged. "I always liked it here. I felt like I was doing my part in the wake of your death. And Wilson's."

House laughed once, loudly. "By doing what? Restoring order to that sinkhole of a hospital?"

"I was a damn good diagnostics fellow," she said, a bit of pride in her voice.

House groaned and placed a hand over his eyes. "Speaking of diagnostics fellows, what happened to Park the Small Asian Wonder and what's-her-face-with-the-nice-ass?"

Cameron sighed. "Dr. Park apparently resented working under Chase and moved up north with her family. Dr. Adams met a lawyer with a practice in Arizona and married him."

"Guess the hoes weren't loyal," House quipped, adjusting his position and chugging back some of his tea.

Cameron choked out a laugh and shook her head, rising to her feet as she did so. "Get some rest," she breathed, yawning and tossing a blanket into House's lap. After tidying up her living room, she shut the lights off and stalked to her own bedroom, feet padding lightly on the hardwood hallway. "House?" she called, not turning to face him.

He didn't respond, only turned his ear in her direction.

"I'm glad you're alive," she said gently, and then he heard the door shut behind her.

House rolled onto one shoulder, catching a glimpse of the silvery scars on his wrist from that night a hundred years ago when he'd been detoxing through the Tritter incident and Cameron had shown up asking for help with a diagnosis. Like the overprotective mother hen she was, she'd chastised him and bandaged him when she saw the blood trailing down his arm.

It all seemed so trivial, now. Stealing Wilson's prescription pad. The Vicodin. His pride, coming second to no one – not even himself. The life he'd led, though he'd saved lives, had been meaningless. This was especially true in the wake of James Wilson. Wilson always held the belief that House thought the world revolved around him, but it was only after his death that House could realize that that man had been his sun, the center of his entire solar system. A supernova had followed his death, blinding House and regurgitating him back into the world like a newborn kitten.

And House knew what followed a supernova – he'd taken enough physics classes to know that with stars as big as Wilson, after they exploded into a beautifully painful scream of light, it was only a matter of time before a black hole ripped a slit through his universe, sucking anything and everything in its path into utter destruction and oblivion.


End file.
